Double Cross

by Stuart Gibbs

  “What was this place?” Greg asked. “A bank?”

  “No, someplace far more important to the Romans,” his father replied. “A bathhouse. Most of the rooms around us were used for cleansing.” He pointed to places where the floor had collapsed, revealing stacks of what looked like tiles underneath. “That would have been a caldarium—a hot bath. Hot air would have been pumped under the floor there to heat the room.”

  “Did you find—?” Greg began.

  “There,” Mom said, pointing with her torch.

  Not far away, another intricate mosaic covered an interior wall of the bath. It featured a beautiful woman with long, flowing hair and brilliant blue eyes. She wore a toga and sandals. An owl perched on her shoulder, and a quiver of arrows was slung across her back.

  “Minerva,” Greg said.

  “Yes,” Aramis said. “Although there’s something strange about that portrait, isn’t there?”

  “You’re right,” Greg’s father said. “Although I can’t put my finger on it, exactly.”

  “It’s not the portrait that’s unusual,” Greg said. “It’s the wall.”

  “What do you mean?” Aramis asked.

  “It’s still standing,” Greg explained. “Every other wall in this entire ruin has crumbled at least a little. This one’s been built to last.”

  “And look at this,” Greg’s mother said. “It’s not the only one.”

  As everyone came closer, they realized that the portrait of Minerva was actually the front face of a medium-sized room, about twenty feet on each side. Each of the four walls was equally well built and still standing after almost two millennia. All were covered with intricate mosaics depicting Minerva.

  “Whoever built this certainly wanted it to stand the test of time,” Dad said. He rapped his knuckles against it. “These walls feel like they’re a foot thick.”

  “And there’s no door,” Aramis said. “It seems to be a crypt of some sort.”

  “To hold the Devil’s Stone,” Greg said. Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were true. He could feel the stone he wore around his own neck pulsing more now. It actually seemed to be pulling him toward the crypt, as though both halves of the stone were attracted to each other.

  “But how are we supposed to get to it if there’s no door?” Mom asked.

  “That’s for us to figure out, I think,” Dad told her. “It wasn’t supposed to be easy to get to this half.”

  “We need to find the Crown of Minerva,” Greg said. He returned his attention to the first mosaic they’d encountered. The very top of Minerva’s head was obscured by a cloud of ancient cobwebs. Greg brushed it away and, to his delight, found a crown hidden behind them—a bejeweled tiara studded with opalescent stones. His joy quickly turned to frustration, however. He’d been hoping the next part would be easy—that there might be an inscription on the crown, telling them what to do next—but now he realized they were stuck again.

  “Maybe it’s the wrong Minerva,” his mother said.

  Greg’s father and Aramis quickly circled the crypt to examine the other portraits of Minerva. “No,” Dad reported sadly. “None of the others is wearing a crown.”

  “So what do we do now?” Aramis asked Greg. “Can you make the half of the stone you already have do something to make the crypt open?”

  “Like what?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aramis said. “If the stone gives you all sorts of power, maybe you can just wish the crypt to open or something.”

  Greg didn’t think that would work, but he tried it anyhow, just to make sure. He focused all his concentration on the crypt, willing the walls to crumble—or slide aside—or do something. But they stayed stubbornly upright.

  Greg shook his head with a sigh. They couldn’t have come all this way, come so close, just to get stymied now. “The stone won’t do this for us,” he said. “We have to do it ourselves, to prove our worth. I know there’s a solution. I can sense it somehow. It’s like all the pieces of the puzzle are there, but I just can’t figure out how to put them together. . . .”

  He found his eye drawn to the the glittering jewels in Minerva’s crown. While most of them were nice, uniform geometric shapes like squares and diamonds, the one in the center was oddly asymmetrical. And yet there was something strangely familiar about it. Greg stared at it a moment, wondering where he’d seen it before, his own words echoing in his head. All the pieces of the puzzle . . . figure out how to put them together.

  He gasped, suddenly realizing where he’d seen the shape before. “It all makes sense.”

  “What?” Aramis asked.

  “The answer has been right in front of me all along,” Greg said. He lifted the amulet from around his neck and stood on tiptoe before the mosaic. The half of the Devil’s Stone in his hand and the jewel in the center of the crown were exactly the same size and shape.

  The others gasped in recognition.

  Greg popped the stone out of the amulet, then pressed it into the matching spot on the mosaic. The tile retracted into the wall and the stone locked into place with a click.

  Nothing else happened.

  It simply remained eerily quiet in the ruins.

  “What now?” Greg asked.

  “You’ve only put the key in the lock,” Aramis told him. “Maybe you still have to turn it.”

  Greg set his hand on the stone. To his surprise, it turned easily. There were more clicks from behind the wall, as if turning the stone had set off a chain of events, each bigger than the last. The clicks grew louder and louder, and the crypt rumbled as though some ancient machinery inside was coming to life.

  The ground trembled. Dust fell from the ceiling. And then an ancient doorway in the crypt wall slid open with a gasp of stale air.

  Greg popped his half of the Devil’s Stone free from the mosaic. The door stayed open, and Greg and the others rushed into the crypt to see what they’d found.

  The room was simply designed on the inside. The walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with marble, as much of Paris and Rome had once been. Only here, thieves had never been able to get in to steal it all.

  In the center of the room a beautiful statue of Minerva sculpted in marble stood on a pedestal. Another silver amulet hung around her neck, and in the center of it sat the second half of the Devil’s Stone.

  The pedestal was so high, Greg needed a boost to get on top of it. His father had to help him up. There were some words in Latin engraved in the pedestal:

  AD OMNEM QUI UTET SAXUM. CAVE.

  NOSCE DIFFERENTIAM INTER QUOD CUPIS ET QUOD EGES.

  “What does that mean?” Greg asked.

  “‘To all who would use the stone, beware,’” Aramis translated. “‘Know the difference between what you desire and what you need.’”

  “Sounds like good advice,” Mom said.

  Balanced atop the pedestal, Greg grasped the chain that held the amulet around Minerva’s neck. It had been so difficult to get to this point, he expected that the chain would be locked to the statue somehow—or that the stone would turn out to be only a hologram—or that some other test would arise. Instead, the chain lifted off easily, and suddenly, after so much time, energy, and adventure, Greg finally had both stones in his possession.

  He could feel them pull toward each other now. The room seemed to surge with power.

  He would have put them together right then and there, except that he had to free the second stone from its amulet. He couldn’t do that while standing on the pedestal, so he hopped back down to the marble floor. . . .

  Only to feel a dark shadow fall over him.

  “Hand over the stones,” said Michel Dinicoeur.

  Dinicoeur and Richelieu both stood in the doorway to the crypt. Richelieu held two torches. Dinicoeur stood behind Aramis, a knife to the boy’s neck. “If you even attempt to put those stones together, I will kill him,” he snarled.

  Greg held up each half of the stone separately so his enemies could see them. “Take the
knife away from his neck,” he ordered.

  Dinicoeur did so, though he kept the blade close.

  “Here,” Greg said, and flung both stones over the heads of Dinicoeur and Richelieu and out the door of the crypt.

  His enemies gasped and whirled after them.

  Greg was hoping to get the jump on them at this point, but Dinicoeur shoved Aramis into Greg, and both boys tumbled to the floor. Dinicoeur and Richelieu slipped out of the crypt. Greg’s parents raced after them, but before they could get out, the great stone door closed, locking them inside.

  It slammed shut with a great gust of air that snuffed out the torches, leaving Greg and his family trapped in the darkness—with both halves of the Devil’s Stone on the other side.

  Porthos and Catherine made it into the Louvre without any trouble. Now that the city was under siege, the king’s guard was nowhere to be seen. Some had raced off to man the defenses. Others had fled in fear. None had stayed to protect the palace. Porthos and Catherine walked right through the front doors.

  Once inside, however, they still thought it best to stay out of sight. Catherine went directly to the first access to the secret passages she knew of—a sliding panel just off the grand entry hall—and from there they wound their way through the labyrinth of hidden tunnels. As they finally moved quickly up the spiral staircase to Milady’s lair, Porthos was huffing and puffing with exertion.

  Catherine paused on the landing. The door was open a crack, although she thought she’d shut it before leaving. She turned to Porthos, about to say something, but he signaled her to stay quiet and unsheathed his sword. Then he flung the door open and leaped into the room, ready for battle.

  No one attacked, however.

  The room was empty. The ropes that Catherine and Greg’s parents had used to tie up Milady, Condé, and Condé’s men lay on the floor, sliced to pieces.

  “They’ve escaped!” Catherine gasped.

  “Take me to the king’s quarters immediately,” Porthos told her. “They’re going to kill him.”

  PART THREE

  THE BATTLE OF PARIS

  SIXTEEN

  TRAPPED IN THE DARK IN THE CRYPT, IT TOOK EVERY ounce of self-control Greg had not to panic. Panic wouldn’t solve his problems. If anything, it would make them worse. You breathed faster when you panicked, and there was only so much air in the crypt. If he wanted to figure a way out of here, he needed to stay calm and keep focused.

  The problem was, he needed to figure out a way fast. It wasn’t for his own safety—there was probably enough air to last everyone an hour—but because Dinicoeur and Richelieu were on the outside with both halves of the Devil’s Stone. Hopefully, the pieces wouldn’t be easy to find, lying somewhere in the ruins in the dark, but there was a chance they had landed right out in the open as well.

  Greg’s mother began to wail in fear. “We’re trapped!” she cried.

  “It will be all right,” Greg’s father told her reassuringly, although Greg could hear the panic at the edge of his voice as well. The two of them had been traumatized by being locked in a dark prison cell in La Mort. This was the perfect scenario to bring all that horror right back.

  Greg carefully made his way through the dark to the front of the crypt, where the door was—or at least, where he thought it was. Perhaps the door really hadn’t locked them in. Perhaps there was a way to open it from the inside. But it wasn’t going to be that easy. The door might as well have been a wall. It didn’t budge when he shoved against it.

  He could hear the muffled voices of Dinicoeur and Richelieu on the other side, bickering as they searched for the halves of the Devil’s Stone.

  “I can’t see them anywhere!” Richelieu cried.

  “Don’t use your eyes to look for them,” Dinicoeur ordered. “Try to sense them. The stones have power you can feel. . . . Aha! Here’s one now!”

  A hand suddenly clamped on Greg’s wrist, startling him.

  “Don’t worry,” Aramis said. “It’s only me. Do you still have any matches left?”

  “Only one,” Greg said. “I’ve been saving it for an emergency.”

  “I think this qualifies,” Aramis replied. “Let’s pray it works. We need it to light this grenade.”

  With that, he pressed a large steel ball into Greg’s hand.

  “How did you . . . ?” Greg began.

  “It’s one of Dinicoeur’s,” Aramis replied. “He had a pouch full of them. While he was busy holding a knife to my neck, I swiped one.”

  Greg fumbled the oil skin out of the purse on his belt and carefully unwrapped the match. “Mom! Dad! Get behind the pedestal!” he ordered.

  As they maneuvered in the dark, Greg found the wick on the grenade. It wasn’t very long. He’d have only a few seconds to get to cover. “It’ll do more damage if we can find a crevice in the wall to set it in,” he told Aramis.

  “All right,” Aramis said, then ran his hands along the wall until he found a good-sized gap in the stone. “I’ve got one!” he cried. “There’s a groove here on the edge where the door meets the wall.”

  Greg followed Aramis’s voice and found the groove himself. “Okay,” he said. “Now you go take cover, too.”

  “No . . .”

  “There’s no time to argue. Just go.”

  Greg listened to Aramis race back to the pedestal.

  On the other side of the door, he heard Richelieu cry out, “I can sense the other half! It’s over here somewhere.”

  Greg pinched his one remaining match in his fingers. Please work, he prayed.

  He struck it along the wall.

  It lit. In the pitch darkness, even the small, sudden flare of light was almost blinding. Greg carefully touched the match to the wick of the grenade.

  The flame sputtered . . . and quickly burned out.

  Greg sucked in a breath, terrified. “No,” he whispered. He heard both his parents gasp as fear set in again. Even Aramis wailed, “No! No . . .”

  Greg looked down at the grenade, unable to believe what had happened.

  And there, he saw it. A tiny red glow in the darkness, like the embers of a fire. The end of the wick had caught, just barely.

  Greg cautiously lifted the grenade to his face and carefully breathed on the wick, trying to give the tiny ember a bit more oxygen without blowing it out entirely.

  The red glow grew. And then the wick really caught, sparking and smoking.

  “It’s going!” Greg shouted. He crammed the grenade into the groove between the door and the wall of the crypt and raced to safety.

  The tiny light of the wick was enough to illuminate the room, and the statue of Minerva flickered in the dim glow. Greg slid across the marble floor and ducked down behind the pedestal.

  “There it is!” Richelieu cried on the other side of the wall. “I see the other half!”

  The grenade exploded.

  The blast was incredibly loud in the tiny crypt, and for a moment, it was as bright as day. Greg huddled tightly with the others behind the pedestal as huge pieces of stone flew past and caromed off the walls. The air filled with the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder.

  Once Greg sensed the worst of the debris had flown past, he chanced standing up from behind the pedestal. The statue of Minerva had been sheared off just above his head. Now, only her feet remained on the pedestal. The rest of the beautiful statue was gone.

  Through the smoke, Greg could see the glimmer of torches out in the ruins. There was no longer a wall between him and his enemies, only a gaping hole.

  “We did it!” Aramis cried.

  Greg was already racing out of the crypt. “Come on! There’s no time to celebrate.”

  He emerged through the hole to find Dinicoeur and Richelieu down for the count. The grenade had blown most of the debris out toward them, catching them by surprise. A huge rock had caught Dinicoeur in the chest and knocked him flat. He lay on his back, struggling to get out from under it, the first half of the Devil’s Stone lying on the ground just out of h
is reach. Richelieu lay sprawled unconscious in a field of stones twenty yards away.

  Greg snatched the first half of the stone away from Dinicoeur’s hands. Dinicoeur roared in hatred, his eyes glowing red in the firelight. “Give that back, you fool!”

  “Never again,” Greg told him.

  He turned back toward the crypt, expecting the others to have joined him by now. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Your father’s leg is caught under a piece of debris,” Aramis replied. “He’s fine, but it’s taking us a while to get him free.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Greg called back. “I just need to find the other half of the stone.”

  He didn’t try looking for it. As Dinicoeur suggested to Richelieu, he tried sensing it. Sure enough, with one half of the stone clutched in his hand, he could feel the power of the other close by. He tried to home in on it, letting the stone pull him along.

  He paused near the prone body of Richelieu, the man who would become Dinicoeur—and thus, the man who had caused him so much misery. I could end it now, he thought. Richelieu’s sword lay nearby. In just a few seconds, Greg could slice the man’s neck. If Richelieu died before attaining immortality, then Dinicoeur’s existence would be negated as well.

  But Greg couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t kill a defenseless man, no matter how evil he was.

  Then he saw the stone. It was still fastened into the amulet that had hung around the statue’s neck, lying in the dust only a few feet away from Richelieu. Greg eagerly raced toward it, trying to control his excitement. He scrambled through the ruins and bent down to pick it up. . . .

  When Richelieu suddenly attacked.